[JimmXinu]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

I feel like I may have asked this before, but answer may have changed with the recent changes to the cover generation code:

I created a column, #fanficcover, to differentiate between downloaded, generated, and manually-inserted covers. Can FFF populate at least the first one? Generate Cover can populate for generated covers, and manually-inserted is, well, manual. I found a metadata entry called 'coverSource' but not sure what it does.

FFF's cover_image can be used with custom_columns_settings and generate_cover_settings, but isn't available for other metadata processing.
From the Cover Settings Calibre Plugin wiki page:

specific, first, default, old & force (plus the empty value for when FanFicFare Downloader finds no cover) are not just convenient labels, but also values set into the FanFicFare metadata entry cover_image. This is most useful with the generate_cover_settings setting mention in examples above and in more detail below.

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

EDIT: Turns out GC's 'update column' doesn't actually work when FFF calls it? Unless it's supposed to and is a bug that needs to be fixed (or something worth adding, though I suspect not), I can just manually fill it out on new fics.

GC updates columns? Huh. You'd have to take that up with kiwidude over in the GC thread. FFF calls GC's generate_cover_for_book() method.